Members Anonymous Guy Posted July 1, 2009 Members Share Posted July 1, 2009 When I first heard of Gibson migrating the bulk of its Korean Epiphone manufacturing to China, I was skeptical. However, when Gibson proposed the establishment of a proprietary Gibson/Epiphone plant in Qingdao, China, I was curious. The move was made so Gibson could be more interactive and hands-on with the production and manufacturing of its Epiphone instruments, rather than contracting the production out to four separate Korean facilities. Makes sense. The Qingdao (EE serial) Epiphones have been pretty good with no drop in quality from the Korean transition. In some cases, the guitars did get a slight boost in quality due to consistency in production facility. However, as of late I've been seeing Epiphones without the EE serial branding and being manufactured in Indonesia instead. What gives? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members LaXu Posted July 1, 2009 Members Share Posted July 1, 2009 Folks in Indonesia can probably do 'em even cheaper than China. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members csm Posted July 1, 2009 Members Share Posted July 1, 2009 Maybe total Epiphone production levels are higher than the new Qingdao plant can fully accomodate, and therefore the overflow production needs to be handled elsewhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Alex W Posted July 1, 2009 Members Share Posted July 1, 2009 Maybe total Epiphone production levels are higher than the new Qingdao plant can fully accomodate, and therefore the overflow production needs to be handled elsewhere. THis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anonymous Guy Posted July 1, 2009 Author Members Share Posted July 1, 2009 Makes sense. Although since the factory was constructed fairly recently, they should have had the foresight to see such an issue coming and adjust accordingly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Will Chen Posted July 1, 2009 Members Share Posted July 1, 2009 Salary inflation for skilled labor in China has skyrocketed something like 40% between 2005 and 2006 and continue to rapidly increase. There have been reports of shortages of skilled workers across the manufacturing industry which is driving salaries to be even more competitive. As a result, many companies are moving to less densely populated regions of China or out of the country all together and trying to train unskilled workers. My guess is to balance the profits across the entire line, a certain percentage now has to be manufactured at a lower cost to balance the increasing manufacturing costs of the primary factory. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_13/b3977049.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ihavenofish Posted July 1, 2009 Members Share Posted July 1, 2009 the specal 2 is indonesian - made by samick. i dont know what others are. as of earlier this year i think there were even a few korean models still and a few other chinese plants doing them. as csm said, i think its just a volume thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Elias Graves Posted July 1, 2009 Members Share Posted July 1, 2009 Could be that contracts haven't run out yet. EG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members thisgoesto11 Posted July 1, 2009 Members Share Posted July 1, 2009 "The move was made so Gibson could be more interactive and hands-on with the production and manufacturing of its Epiphone instruments, rather than contracting the production out to four separate Korean facilities." The move was made because the volume at which the guitars were being produced gave them the ability to do it more profitable in China. Similiar quality, easier to manage, better availablity and ability to react to market trends are also perks. Even though Gibson owns the plant they still can't quite get their forecasts right, so they have to do more outsourcing. When you're dependent on other people to build stuff for you, you have to be very accurate with your forecasts. You're basically guessing what you might sell 12-24 months from the date you specify. If you're dependent on a factory that you don't own who does business with a number of your competitors you don't have much leverage if your forecast was way off and you either need alot more guitars or you can't sell a particular model and another boat load of them is enroute. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members harold heckuba Posted July 1, 2009 Members Share Posted July 1, 2009 I would disagree with the statement by the OP that the Chinese Epis are as good as the Korean. No comparison, IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Tweedledee Posted July 1, 2009 Members Share Posted July 1, 2009 I would disagree with the statement by the OP that the Chinese Epis are as good as the Korean. No comparison, IMO. Really? No comparison? That seems like quite an exaggeration. At the very least, the pickups in the LP Standards and G400s are consistently MUCH better than the pickups in those some models when they were MIK. Having owned a few MIK Epis over the years, the pickups in almost all of them were muddy and horrible. I haven't run into that same problem with the MIC ones. As for build quality and fit/finish, I have noticed that there seem to be more MIC ones that have minor finish issues so maybe QC isn't quite as good, but the MIC Epis without those issues are just as good as any MIK Epi I've owned or played. Edit: I should note that this is based just on the LP Standards and higher LP models, the G400, and the Dot models. I don't know about the lower-end ones like the Specials, G310, LP100, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Elias Graves Posted July 1, 2009 Members Share Posted July 1, 2009 I snoop around GC quite a bit and always play a few Epis. When the China switch first happened they seemed to suffer more inconsistencies. The ones I've looked over the last 6 months or so have been pretty good. A lot fewer duds than before. I think it took them some time to get where they wanted to be but I believe the Chinese models are u to snuff now. There are still some dogs, but a lot fewer than before. EG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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